World of WarCraft Protocol Reversal, General Information

[UserLoser.]

No, but if the situation gets out of hand, say, someone makes a flood bot, the researchers who lead to that floodbot being developed can be, in some twisted reality called the internet, be held responsible.

A floodbot?  Only an idiot would do that, and it's a fact at this moment in time that no idiots have access to the code which would give them the ability to flood or spam anything.  Where as for Battle.net, any idiot can do anything as long as they know how to copy and paste since people make things open source.  Now if someone made an open source WoW bot under GPL or whatever the hell it's called, I can see maybe Blizzard caring

[Joe[x86]]

Seeing as how this time I'm the one (well, we are) doing the disassembling, I'm not releasing my bot open source. I will, however, release my research, like in a BnetDocs type document.

Anyhow, I was screwing arround with IDA, and eventually wrote some VB stuff to sift through the strings output, and ended up with these two files.
http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/SourceCodeFiles.txt (Rather useless, but oh well.)
http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/MethodUsage.txt (Can you say JACKPOT?)

[Michael]

Does this mean you guys are making a wow bot to play the game for you?

[Blaze]

No, and if your read all the posts, you would understand that.  They are just trying to understand all of the packets for WoW as we have for Starcraft, Diablo and Warcraft.

[Joe[x86]]

Bump. UserLoser, did you find those auth documents?

[Joe[x86]]

I've recieved (mythix recieved, rather) a DMCA takedown notice regaurding my published work. Due to lack of interest, this project is officially suspended. However, if anyone is willing to help, I'm back in.

[MyndFyre]

How?

[Joe[x86]]

How what? I asume you mean the DMCA takedown?
http://www.x86labs.org/forum/index.php/topic,3139.0.html

RE: http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/ - Please see the end of this email for a
list of files on this site. This site being targeted for distributing our source
code.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Recently, we have received an increasing amount of feedback from our customers
in regard to the probable copyright infringement of Diablo, Diablo II,
Starcraft, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Warcraft III and World of Warcraft
products (each, a "Program") on the Internet. We here at Blizzard share the
concerns that many gamers are voicing. In this regard, we have contacted one of
your users in connection with the aforementioned site and the infringement of
Blizzard intellectual property.

Please note that all title, ownership, and intellectual property rights in and
to each Program and any and all copies thereof (including, but not limited to,
any titles, computer code, objects, characters, character names, stories,
dialog, catch phrases, locations, artwork, animations, sounds, musical
compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, any related
documentation, and "applets" incorporated into a Program) are owned by Blizzard
Entertainment or its licensors. Each Program is protected by the trademark and
copyright laws of the United States, international copyright treaties and
conventions, and other laws. Blizzard reserves all rights in each Program,
except those rights granted by Blizzard in writing. Each Program contains
certain licensed materials, and Blizzard's licensors may protect their rights or
rely on Blizzard to protect those rights in the event of any violation of the
end user license agreement and copyright law.

As part of our effort to protect all proprietary rights related to Diablo,
Diablo II, Starcraft, Warcraft, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Warcraft III
and World of Warcraft, we would like you to promptly remove all materials
infringing onand/or all materials which allow others to infringe on the
copyrights and/or trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment's products from the
aforementioned site which you host or disable access to such site. This includes
any unauthorized software, artwork, images, sounds or derivative works thereof
that may be on the aforementioned site. Additionally, we would appreciate it if
you would communicate this request to those individuals involved in the creation
and maintenance of your web site.

Please be advised that at this time you have forty eight (48) hours in which to
comply with our request otherwise we will be forced to pursue formal action. We
would like to thank you in advance for choosing to work with us in a unified
effort to promote the integrity of our games and the well being of our online
gaming community.

If you require formal notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright
(DMCA), please let us know and we will have our attorney provide such notice.



Files:
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/MethodUsage.txt
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/SourceCodeFiles.txt
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/checkversion.txt
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/packet_formats.txt
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/talkpacket.txt
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/wow_auth_info_fields.txt
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/wow_header.txt
    http://www.javaop.com/~joe/wow/wow_protocol.txt

Regards,
Anti-Piracy Team

Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support

If you respond to this email, please attach all previous messages and files
relating to this issue.

However, iago made an interesting point.

I still stand by my initial assessment that there's nothing illegal there, but it's easier to just do what they say than pursue a legal battle.

Last, but not least, I have the entire /wow folder saved on my computer, if anyone wants it.

[Arta]

I presume that a legal battle is beyond your means, which is fair enough, but it might be worth asking them exactly how those files infringe their copyrights. IIRC Stealth managed to work something out with them when they sent a takedown for Stealthbot. It can't hurt to ask for more details, especially if you cooperate temporarily. You might also want to contact the EFF and ask their advice.

[MyndFyre]

It strikes me as odd that they didn't just send you a DMCA notice.  That's how I believe Blizzard has worked in the past.  How did you receive this notice?  E-mail would surprise me as well.  I believe legal notices (I realize this isn't one, but meh) would only be sent by certified mail.  Did you examine the e-mail headers?  Further, when Blizzard contacts you, they generally include the name of the representative that sent you the email.  That's been my experience at least.

[Joe[x86]]

I'll contact mythix about that. But yeah, it was going nowhere anyhow.

Arta, the thing is, this is reverse engineering which is against their TOS and EULA, and EULAs are (IIRC) legally inforceable.

[MyndFyre]

Arta, the thing is, this is reverse engineering which is against their TOS and EULA, and EULAs are (IIRC) legally inforceable.

That's still under debate.

[rabbit]

Yeah.  People not knowing if Federal laws superceding user-coperation agreements annoys me.  Corperations need to STFU.

[MyndFyre]

Yeah.  People not knowing if Federal laws superceding user-coperation agreements annoys me.  Corperations need to STFU.

What is a contract besides a waiver of rights or promise of delivery?

[Arta]

In the UK, at any rate, there are certain statutes that cannot be overridden by a contract. These exist either where the statute says the right cannot be signed away, or where a court has decided that a right is important enough not to be waivable. The right to reverse engineer, subject to certain conditions, is a right that cannot be waived here. In the UK, all those EULA clauses that prohibit reverse engineering are not valid, and would be ignored by a court.

Contract law is tricky: it's much more than a simply promise of delivery or waiver of rights.